"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel
nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest
lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)

Monday, April 29, 2013

NASHVILLE: When federal agents descended on the Knoxville
headquarters of Pilot Flying J on April 15, it was the first inkling the
public and company executives had of an FBI and Internal Revenue
Service investigation that began nearly two years ago.After the
country’s largest diesel retailer sought to downplay the probe, federal
officials took the unusual step of unsealing an affidavit that helped
authorize the raid before any charges have been filed. The sworn
statement recounts internal Pilot conversations that led investigators
to conclude there was a widespread scheme to defraud trucking company
customers in order to boost company profits and pad sales commissions.

The
privately held company with $31 billion in annual revenues is run by
CEO Jimmy Haslam, who also owns the NFL’s Cleveland Browns. The Haslam
family, including brother Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, holds a majority
stake. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello has said the league had no
plans to ask Haslam to relinquish operational control of the Browns
during the investigation. There is obviously a chance the league could
change its stance as the legal process evolves. The
investigation started May 4, 2011, when the FBI was contacted by someone
who said he had been told by a Pilot regional sales manager that
customers were being cheated out of contractually set price rebates.

The
affidavit gave no details about whether the person, identified in the
document only as confidential source No. 1, was a colleague, customer or
how they were connected to Pilot.The source agreed to cooperate
with the FBI, and the next month began secretly recording conversations
with the sales manager, who outlined how two top sales officials at
Pilot would withhold portions of money due to customers in a process
most often referred to as “manual rebates.”The recorded conversations also pointed agents to a former regional sales manager, Cathy Giesick.Federal
agents contacted both the sales manager and Giesick in the first week
of October 2012. Both agreed to cooperate and confirmed that their
supervisors reduced rebates due to customers.Giesick and the current sales manager, identified as source No. 2, were granted immunity for their cooperation.Giesick
told agents she left Pilot in part because of her discomfort with the
rebate-lowering scheme. She provided an example, saying if a customer
was due a $10,000 rebate, her supervisor, national sales director Brian
Mosher, would cut that payment to about $7,500.No charges have
been filed in the case. While Jimmy Haslam has denied any wrongdoing, he
has suspended several members of the sales team, but has declined to
identify exactly who has been suspended. The company has not made any of
its other workers available and Haslam has made statements, but not
taken questions from the media.Haslam has called for the review of all 3,330 trucking customer contracts and making all billing and payments electronic.

Smaller accounts targetedGiesick
said the fraud “was typically directed at smaller accounts where the
customer would not have the capability to catch the reduction,”
according to the affidavit.If a customer complained, Giesick said Mosher told her “blame the error on a computer glitch.”Meanwhile,
source No. 2 began secretly recording conversations with other
colleagues on Pilot’s sales team. On Oct. 17, Omro, Wis.-based sales
manager Rob Yurnovich was recorded as saying the rebate reductions can
become difficult to manage.

“I wouldn’t say it’s unethical. I’m
just uncomfortable with it,” Yurnovich said on the recording. “And the
fact that when you get caught you have to do so much back pedaling, you
lose a ton of credibility whether you can cover it with a story or not.”Sales directors talkLater
that month, source No. 2 recorded a regional sales directors meeting at
the Rockwood, Tenn., lake house of John “Stick” Freeman, Pilot’s vice
president of sales.Freeman told younger colleagues that they should carefully target customers.“Some of ’em don’t know what a spreadsheet is. I’m not kiddin’,” Freeman said. “So, again, my point is this: Know your customer.“If
the guy’s sophisticated and he truly has gone out and gotten deals from
the other competitors and he’s gettin’ daily prices from us, don’t jack
with his discounts, ’cause he’s gonna know, OK?”Freeman regaled
his colleagues with a story of being caught withholding $1 million in
rebates due to client Western Express. Freeman said Pilot had to pay up
that amount but laughed because the company still came out $6 million
ahead.

Source No. 2 later asked Freeman what Jimmy Haslam’s reaction had been.“He knew it all along. Loved it,” Freeman said. “We were makin’ $450,000 a month on him — why wouldn’t he love it?”“Did it for five years, cost us a million bucks,” he said. “I mean, we made $6 million on the guy, cost us a million bucks.”Although
the affidavit doesn’t include any recordings of conversations with
Haslam, Special Agent Robert H. Root said the transcripts don’t cover
every recording.Mixed reactionAt the training session, Mosher cautioned his colleagues to be careful about how they described what was happening with rebates.The instructions from the senior sales staff drew differing reactions from more junior staff.“Welcome
to the gray side,” Holly Radford, a regional account representative
based at Pilot headquarters, said to laughter from her colleagues.Jason Holland, a sales manager based in Nashville, followed up with, “I’ll be honest, I’m struggling with the gray part.”Mosher
responded that keeping the rebate steady will avoid confusion among
customers when prices — and margins — spike or fall. A customer
accustomed to receiving a $25,000 rebate will raise questions when it
suddenly surges to $75,000 and then back to $15,000, he said.“So
my answer is, why put him in that situation, where he needs to even
ask?” Mosher said with a laugh. “Don’t ever pay him the 75!”

By
April 9, source No. 2 had told the FBI that the Pilot Flying J general
counsel, Kristen Seabrook, was requiring all information needed to
approve rebates be submitted by April 12, with the next round of
payments scheduled to be sent April 15.That’s the day the FBI and
IRS agents raided Pilot’s corporate headquarters, the building housing
its computer servers and the homes of sales team members Mosher in
Bettendorf, Iowa, Arnie Ralenkotter in Hebron, Ky., and Nashville-based
sales director Kevin Hanscomb.The three men did not return telephone calls from the Associated Press.

BISMARCK (AP) - The North Dakota attorney general's office has paid a
doctor nearly $21,000 to help the state defend an abortion law passed
by the Legislature two years ago.The lawsuit that begins this
week in Fargo is over a 2011 law banning the widely accepted use of a
medication that induces abortion.Records obtained by the
Associated Press show the state has spent about $23,000 in legal costs
to date, and almost all the money has gone to Dr. Donna Harrison of Eau
Claire, Mich. to act as an expert witness.Harrison is the president the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.New
York-based Center for Reproductive Rights is representing the Red River
Women Clinic in Fargo in the lawsuit. A judge has temporarily blocked
enforcement of the law.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

CNN, the fallen child prodigy of television journalism, has spent the
majority of its time after the Clinton Impeachment periodically
re-branding in an increasingly pathetic attempt to stave off the
inevitable decline into irrelevance. The most recent iteration of CNN
has involved copying their meth-ed out stripper of a sister channel
“HLN” because nothing says “respecting your audience” like savaging them
with non-stop Casey Anthony updates. However even this effort ended
terribly as CNN continually bungled its Boston Bombing coverage to the point where even your mom was getting decent cracks at their expense on Twitter.

Obviously this sort of awfulness calls for a desperate attempt at
salvation, and since CNN has no confidence in the intelligence of its
viewership, the idea of just recycling an older crappy show makes sense.
So it was in that vein that CNN announced earlier this year that they
are taking full advantage of Jon Stewart’s temporary absence from TV to re-introduce “CROSSFIRE”, a show featuring the same commentators that you hate in other shows but with MOAR SCREAMING.

TV Gold right? Well obviously that depends on the hosts that CNN’s
new head, Jeff Zucker (aka the man responsible for the war crime of
keeping Donald Trump relevant), chooses from “the right and the left.”
But judging from the rumors about who these individuals might be, it is
apparent that CNN is done trying to woo viewers and is now just going to
hate fuck them into compliance with performance art levels of
absurdity. So look out world because Newt fucking Gingrich will be
scaring your children while grifting from your grandparents on the tee-vee this summer.READ MORE »

A big theme this past week has been the decline of the austerity movement.Austerity has been discredited as a path to economic prosperity for
awhile. But last week, a paper by a graduate student (UMass Amherst's
Thomas Herndon) debunked
the famous Reinhart & Rogoff study, which had claimed that growth
slows precipitously when a country's debt rises above 90% of GDP.Since then, in Europe, we've seen a backlash against austerity from
various names, whether it's the International Monetary Federation
criticizing the UK, fund manager Bill Gross critizing the UK, or European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso talking about the limits to austerity.And now all of this has broken through to the mainstream with last night's Colbert Report, where Thomas Herndon was the guest.Colbert had two segments devoted to making the austerians look like total laughingstocks.One was the actual interview with Herndon. The other came as part of a news roundup, where he mocked Paul Ryan and "Rogaine and Braveheart."It's one of those cultural moments where you can see the losing side made to look like fools in mass media.Incidentally, this is exactly what Paul Krugman predicted last week would be the significance of Herndon's paper:

The point is that the next time Olli
Rehn, or George Osborne, or Paul Ryan declares, sententiously, that we
must have austerity because serious economists (i.e., not Krugman and
friends) tell us that debt is a terrible thing, people in the audience
will snicker — which they should have been doing all along, but now it
has become socially acceptable...................................................

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

As the case against Paul Kevin Curtis for allegedly mailing ricin was
unraveling Tuesday afternoon, FBI agents were already searching the
house of another man in connection with the ongoing investigation.

Their focus has shifted to Everett Dutschke — a failed political
candidate, taekwondo teacher, and bluesman who’s currently facing child
molestation charges. While the feds has been publicly silent about
Dutschke and the search of his home, Curtis’ lawyers have been very
loudly and publicly pointing the finger at Dutschke, claiming he framed
Curtis because of a feud that began with music and martial arts. Dutschke has not been charged in the case and has denied involvement
in the mailing of the ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama
and two other officials.

At a strange, celebratory press conference after the charges against Curtis were dismissed
Tuesday, his attorney Christi McCoy, suggested he was freed because
investigators have moved on to “another suspect.” Though she did not
name this other suspect, McCoy said she believed investigators were
still at Dutschke’s home. McCoy first connected Dutschke to the case
earlier this week when she suggested he was interested in framing Curtis
for the crime because of a longstanding argument between the two men.

Curtis provided further details about the feud at the press
conference when reporters asked him about his relationship with
Dutschke. He claimed he did not know Dutschke well, but had received
angry messages from him and heard indications from others that Dutschke
had a major grudge against him. Curtis implied Dutschke may have
developed these negative feelings towards him when they studied
taekwondo together or because of his career as an Elvis impersonator.
According to Curtis, one of the messages he received from Dutschke was
an email saying, “I’ve created a band called Robodrum and we’re going to
throw you off the national circuit.”

Multiple websites identify Dutschke as the frontman of a group called Dusty and the Robodrum. On Facebook, the group’s act is described as “Live-Loop Oriented Rock with tons of lasers.” According to reviews, Robodrum has released numerous albums and recorded with several other artists including Pearl Jam drummer Dave Abbruzzese.

In addition to his musical activities, Dutschke operated a taekwondo studio and worked as an insurance agent. Advertisements posted on a Myspace page
under Dutschke’s name and a username he used in his personal email
dubbed him “the insurance warrior.” An investigator with the office of
First Circuit Court District Attorney Trent Kelly confirmed to TPM that
Dutschke is currently out on bond and facing three charges of fondling
for an incident that the county sheriff has said involved a seven-year-old girl who was at his taekwondo studio.

Dutschke also dabbled in politics. In 2007, he ran against a man named Steve Holland for a seat in Mississippi’s House of Representatives. A YouTube page with Dutschke’s name and username
shows several videos he seems to have made attacking Holland during
that race. It also included a clip of a man identified as Dutschke
conducting surveillance on people who were allegedly vandalizing his
campaign posters and driving after them while listening to talk radio.
Dutschke was defeated by Holland in that race.

Along with President Barack Obama and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) a
ricin-tainted letter was received by Holland’s mother, Mississippi
Justice Court Judge Sadie Holland. In a conversation with TPM on
Tuesday, Steve Holland said he hasn’t heard from Dutschke since their
race.

“I’m telling you the gospel truth, he ran against me and I saw him
four or five times in the course of the campaign in public discourse,”
Holland said. “He’s never bothered me. He ran a very nasty, vicious,
angry campaign against me, but I didn’t think anything about it. … I
don’t think the guy’s thought twice about me since then. … I’ve had no
indication of it.”Holland said he felt Dutschke’s campaign was vicious because it was solely focused on attacks against him.

“Everything he did was negative. I don’t remember him saying, ‘I,
Everett Dutschke stand for this, I’m going to do this,’” Holland
explained. “He was always negative about ‘Boss Holland,’ that’s the term
he gave me.”Dutschke apparently did not call to congratulate Holland after his victory. “You kidding me?” Holland said. “Hell no.”

Dutschke has previously denied any involvement in the ricin mailings. TPM spoke to Dutschke this afternoon
shortly before FBI agents reportedly arrived at his house. He expressed
shock upon hearing Curtis had been released and then said he had to go.
Subsequent attempts to reach him have been unsuccessful. Both the FBI
and the local Lee County Sheriff’s Department have not responded to
multiple requests for comment on this story.

In addition to the many attacks on Holland, the YouTube page that
appears to be Dutschke’s also featured a clip from September 2008 in
which Dutschke predicted that year’s presidential race would be won by
“whoever treats us as if we’re, you know, intelligent.”

“If you’re beholden to the Republican Party or if you’re beholden to
the Democrat [sic] Party, you are not a free and independent thinker by
your very nature. … I am so fed up with people who cling to their
labels, their party labels, way too tightly,” Dutschke said, before
adding, “It’s September 11th, I’m feeling a little reflective today, so
that’s just my one small voice.”

A Republican state representative in New Hampshire posted a video by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Facebook last week suggesting the Boston marathon bombing was a "false flag" operation carried out by the US government. Rep. Stella Temblay (R), a member of the state's 400-person House of
Representatives, posted the video on Glenn Beck's Facebook page on April
19 with an accompanying message:

Just as you said would happen. Top Down, Bottom UP. The Boston
Marathon was a Black Ops "terrorist" attack. One suspect killed, the
other one will be too before they even have a chance to speak. Drones
and now "terrorist" attacks by our own Government. Sad day, but a "wake
up" to all of us. First there was a "suspect" then there wasnt. Infowars
broke the story and they knew they had been "found out"

Reached by phone, Temblay told the local Foster's Daily Democrat that
she had suspicions of some kind of plot involving Secretary of State
John Kerry, Saudi nationals, and "black ops" soldiers at the scene of
the marathon. Several of these elements have popped up both in Jones'
work and various Internet fever swamps since the bombing.Officials told the Washington Post on
Tuesday that Djokhar Tsarnaev confessed to carrying out the attacks in
tandem with his brother, telling authorities they were upset with
American foreign policy towards the Middle East. Temblay has a history of spreading conspiracy theories. Last year she
e-mailed out a video claiming President Obama was not a citizen,
according to the Huffington Post, promptiong a Democratic colleague to label her "an embarassment to us as a chamber."The state's Democratic Party condemned her latest episode on Tuesday. "[E]ven for the New Hampshire Republican Party, which has become
synonymous with the Tea Party and radical extremism, Representative
Tremblay's claims are a new low," New Hampshire Democratic Party
Communication Director Harrell Kirstein said in a statement. "She is an
embarrassment to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, to her
constituents, and to the entire State of New Hampshire."

House Republicans spent most of their time over the last three years
reminding Americans that Senate Democrats hadn’t passed a budget in two,
then three, then four years. It was a regular Republican talking point,
a particular favorite of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s.
But now that the Senate has returned to regular order by passing a
budget, House Republicans are refusing to come to the table to negotiate
a long-term spending plan.Republicans passed their own budget, the plan Ryan authored, in
March, and since the proposal differs from the Senate budget, regular
order requires the two chambers to come together in conference to iron
out their differences in a compromise budget that is then taken back to
the full memberships of each house. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-NV) has hinted at forming such a conference for more than a week, but
Republicans have shown no willingness to join him. This morning, Senate
Republicans blocked Reid from creating a conference committee, a move that led Reid to accuse them of turning “a complete 180″:

“It seems House Republicans don’t want to be seen
even discussing the possibility of compromise with the Democrats for
fear of a Tea Party revolt,” Reid said.He noted that Republicans have called for “regular order” for years.“A strange thing happened: House Republicans did a complete
180 — they flipped. They’re no longer interested in regular order even
though they preached that for years,” Reid said.

The GOP offered numerous excuses for why they wouldn’t approve a
conference, including that certain rules need to be worked out. Ryan and
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R), the ranking member on the Senate Budget
Committee, have said they need to agree to “framework” for a deal to make a compromise more likely. What that “framework” would need to be to get Republicans to agree to
conference, however, is clear: a deal that cuts spending but includes no new tax revenue.
That has been a consistent GOP demand throughout budget and spending
fights over the last three years, a sticking point that has brought the
government to the brink
of both shutdown and default. It’s also a concession Democrats and
President Obama are unwilling to make, given that they have already
agreed to nearly $2.5 trillion in spending cuts while receiving little
revenue in exchange. Any new deal, in fact, would have to achieve 90 percent of its deficit reduction from tax revenue to balance the overall reductions achieved in the last four years.

Monday, April 22, 2013

The death toll and injury count in the West, Texas fertilizer plant
explosion that took place last Wednesday continues to rise, with 35-40 dead and 60 still unaccounted for. Recovering from the disaster will likely take a lot of time and resources, and President Obama has already pledged federal assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other agencies.Some Texas Congressmen have also requested aid to help the victims
and the town rebuild. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he is “working to
ensure that all available resources are marshaled
to deal with the horrific loss of life and suffering that we’ve seen.”
Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX) has said that he, plus Senators Cruz and John
Cornyn (R-TX), are working with Congressional leaders to extend necessary assistance. Cornyn has also said there is funding under his subcommittee for chemical site security standards and infrastructure protection.Yet when Northeast cities needed disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a storm that killed hundreds, all three Congressmen voted against the aid package:

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz lambasted the Sandy Aid package, voting against the measure in January. Cruz issued a statement explaining that he voted against the aid because it included a number of spending measures that were not related to disaster relief,
including “Smithsonian repairs, upgrades to National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration airplanes, and more funding for Head Start.”
[…]
After Flores voted against the Sandy aid package, he justified his vote by saying the packagewas “too large” and did “more than meet the immediate needs of Sandy victims.”

Sunday, April 21, 2013

(Reuters) -The
fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a
small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been
storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally
trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
(DHS).
Yet a person familiar with DHS
operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did
not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is
required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium
nitrate - which can also be used in bomb making - unaware of any danger
there.
Fertilizer plants and depots
must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb (180 kg) or more of the
substance. Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health
Services, which weren't shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of
it on hand last year.
A U.S.
congressman and several safety experts called into question on Friday
whether incomplete disclosure or regulatory gridlock may have
contributed to the disaster.
"It
seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid," Rep. Bennie
Thompson, (D-MS), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland
Security, said in a statement. "This facility was known to have
chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the
Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we
understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew
up."
Company officials did not
return repeated calls seeking comment on its handling of chemicals and
reporting practices. Late on Friday, plant owner Donald Adair released a
general statement expressing sorrow over the incident but saying West
Fertilizer would have little further comment while it cooperated with
investigators to try to determine what happened.
"This tragedy will continue to hurt deeply for generations to come," Adair said in the statement.
Failure
to report significant volumes of hazardous chemicals at a site can lead
the DHS to fine or shut down fertilizer operations, a person familiar
with the agency's monitoring regime said. Though the DHS has the
authority to carry out spot inspections at facilities, it has a small
budget for that and only a "small number" of field auditors, the person
said.
Firms are responsible for
self reporting the volumes of ammonium nitrate and other volatile
chemicals they hold to the DHS, which then helps measure plant risks and
devise security and safety plans based on them.
Since
the agency never received any so-called top-screen report from West
Fertilizer, the facility was not regulated or monitored by the DHS under
its CFAT standards, largely designed to prevent sabotage of sites and
to keep chemicals from falling into criminal hands.
The
DHS focuses "specifically on enhancing security to reduce the risk of
terrorism at certain high-risk chemical facilities," said agency
spokesman Peter Boogaard. "The West Fertilizer Co. facility in West,
Texas is not currently regulated under the CFATS program."
The
West Fertilizer facility was subject to other reporting, permitting and
safety programs, spread across at least seven state and federal
agencies, a patchwork of regulation that critics say makes it difficult
to ensure thorough oversight.
An
expert in chemical safety standards said the two major federal
government programs that are supposed to ensure chemical safety in
industry - led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) - do not regulate
the handling or storage of ammonium nitrate. That task falls largely to
the DHS and the local and state agencies that oversee emergency planning
and response.
More than 4,000 sites nationwide are subject to the DHS program.
"This
shows that the enforcement routine has to be more robust, on local,
state and federal levels," said the expert, Sam Mannan, director of
process safety center at Texas A&M University. "If information is
not shared with agencies, which appears to have happened here, then the
regulations won't work."
HODGEPODGE OF REGULATION
Chemical
safety experts and local officials suspect this week's blast was caused
when ammonium nitrate was set ablaze. Authorities suspect the disaster
was an industrial accident, but haven't ruled out other possibilities.
The
fertilizer is considered safe when stored properly, but can explode at
high temperatures and when it reacts with other substances.
"I
strongly believe that if the proper safeguards were in place, as are at
thousands of (DHS) CFATS-regulated plants across the country, the loss
of life and destruction could have been far less extensive," said Rep.
Thompson.
A blaze was reported shortly before a massive explosion leveled dozens of homes and blew out an apartment building.
A
U-Haul truck packed with the substance mixed with fuel oil exploded to
raze the Oklahoma federal building in 1995. Another liquid gas
fertilizer kept on the West Fertilizer site, anhydrous ammonia, is
subject to DHS reporting and can explode under extreme heat.
Wednesday's
blast heightens concerns that regulations governing ammonium nitrate
and other chemicals - present in at least 6,000 depots and plants in farming
states across the country - are insufficient. The facilities serve
farmers in rural areas that typically lack stringent land zoning
controls, many of the facilities sit near residential areas.
Apart
from the DHS, the West Fertilizer site was subject to a hodgepodge of
regulation by the EPA, OSHA, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the
Texas Department of State Health Services, the Texas Commission on
Environmental Quality and the Office of the Texas State Chemist.
But
the material is exempt from some mainstays of U.S. chemicals safety
programs. For instance, the EPA's Risk Management Program (RMP) requires
companies to submit plans describing their handling and storage of
certain hazardous chemicals. Ammonium nitrate is not among the chemicals
that must be reported.
In its RMP
filings, West Fertilizer reported on its storage of anhydrous ammonia
and said that it did not expect a fire or explosion to affect the
facility, even in a worst-case scenario. And it had not installed
safeguards such as blast walls around the plant.
A
separate EPA program, known as Tier II, requires reporting of ammonium
nitrate and other hazardous chemicals stored above certain quantities.
Tier II reports are submitted to local fire departments and emergency
planning and response groups to help them plan for and respond to
chemical disasters. In Texas, the reports are collected by the
Department of State Health Services. Over the last seven years,
according to reports West Fertilizer filed, 2012 was the only time the
company stored ammonium nitrate at the facility.
It reported having 270 tons on site.
"That's
just a god awful amount of ammonium nitrate," said Bryan Haywood, the
owner of a hazardous chemical consulting firm in Milford, Ohio. "If they
were doing that, I would hope they would have gotten outside help."
In
response to a request from Reuters, Haywood, who has been a safety
engineer for 17 years, reviewed West Fertilizer's Tier II sheets from
the last six years. He said he found several items that should have
triggered the attention of local emergency planning authorities - most
notably the sudden appearance of a large amount of ammonium nitrate in
2012.
"As a former HAZMAT coordinator, that would have been a red flag for me," said Haywood, referring to hazardous materials.
(Additional
reporting by Anna Driver in Houston, Timothy Gardner and Ayesha Rascoe
in Washington, and Selam Gebrekidan and Michael Pell in New York;
Editing by Mary Milliken and Robert Birsel)

Saturday, April 20, 2013

A student has filed a complaint with the Florida Atlantic University
police against former Rep. Allen West (R-FL), claiming a statement he
made online was threatening.“As students, we deserve to feel safe exercising our First Amendment
rights to peacefully assemble and express our grievances with the
University,” Stephanie Rosendorf of the Florida College Democrats wrote
in her complaint, which was obtained by Raw Story. “These days you never
know if a threat on social media is to be taken lightly, and in this
case it certainly should not be. Allen West is making me feel in danger
at school.”

Rosendorf told Raw Story that she fears some of West’s followers might react violently.“As
a student at FAU and a member of the community, I felt shocked and
threatened to see Allen West’s comments,” she said via email. “We as
students should be able to exercise our First Amendment right to
peacefully assemble without fear of violent retaliation from Allen West
or any of his like-minded followers. I urge the University to take extra
steps to ensure that Allen West is not allowed on or near our campus.”

In a Facebook post,
West warned FAU students would face “the side of me that you do not
want to see” if they continued to target his wife Angela Graham-West. He
said students from Florida Atlantic University had “stalked” his wife
and “sent letters to her company headquarters.”“How dare you animals attack my wife and her professional reputation. This is your one and only advisory notice,” he concluded.

West’s wife is a member of FAU’s Board of Trustees. The board has
faced student-led protests over a $6 million stadium-naming deal with
private prison operator GEO Group. The private prison company has been
accused of mistreating and neglecting inmates. GEO Group backed out the deal on April 2.Angela West told New Times Broward Palm Beach she felt harassed because students came to her office uninvited and also called for her to be fired.

TPMThe West, Texas fertilizer plant where a powerful explosion killed at
least 14 and injured dozens on Wednesday failed to disclose a massive
ammount of ammonium nitrate ordinarily regulated by federal officials,
according to Reuters.The U.S. Department of Homeland Security requires fertilizer plants
and depots to disclose amounts of ammonium nitrate, which can be used to
make a bomb, above 400 lbs. The West, Texas plant, West Fertilizer,
reportedly held 270 tons of the substance, 1,350 times that limit."This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold
amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism
Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the
plant existed until it blew up," Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said in a
statement, according to Reuters.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says that he is prepared to make “all available
resources” available from the federal government to assist in the
recovery after an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas — but the
senator voted against aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy earlier because
he said it was “pork.”The Dallas Morning Newsreported on Thursday that Cruz had reacted to the fertilizer plant explosion that killed dozens in West, Texas earlier this week. “We are in very close touch with officials on the ground and we’re
monitoring the tragic accident closely,” Cruz said in Washington. “It’s
truly horrific and we are working to ensure that all available resources
are marshaled to deal with the horrific loss of life and suffering that
we’ve seen.”In a statement
on his website, Cruz added that “[w]e remain in communication with Gov.
Perry’s office and emergency management officials, and stand to offer
whatever support we can.”But following the super storm that devastated much of the East Coast
last year, Cruz was not as willing to part with taxpayer money. According to The New York Times, the junior Texas senator voted against Sandy aid three times. “Hurricane Sandy inflicted devastating damage on the East Coast, and
Congress appropriately responded with hurricane relief,” Cruz said in a statement
earlier this year. “Unfortunately, cynical politicians in Washington
could not resist loading up this relief bill with billions in new
spending utterly unrelated to Sandy.”“This bill is symptomatic of a larger problem in Washington – an
addiction to spending money we do not have. The United States Senate
should not be in the business of exploiting victims of natural disasters
to fund pork projects that further expand our debt.”On Thursday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) also asked President Barack Obama for a “quick turnaround” on federal aid.

A Tennessee legislator is catching heat for passing a resolution to honor himself. While
Tennessee lawmakers have long been criticized for wasting time and
money on frivolous bills, some say this one tops them all. Resolutions
are basically congratulatory notes for an achievement, an occasion or a
job well-done, and so far this year, lawmakers have passed 476
resolutions - each one typically costing taxpayers about $300. Sen.
Ophelia Ford has passed one to honor her intern, Sens. Matthew and
Timothy Hill have honored their late grandmother but Sen. Jon Lundberg
just passed a resolution to honor himself. "I think it's
important for us as a state to say, 'Hey, great job on creating jobs and
moving the ball forward,'" said Lundberg, R-Bristol. Lundberg's
resolution, written by his own staff, honors his public relations firm,
The Corporate Image, and says things like "the owners and employees of
The Corporate Image are many such noteworthy persons" and "the company
has continued to set the standard for the highest quality professional
services."

Authorities have confirmed a man who remains at large after allegedly
participating in a night of violence that ended with a shootout in
Watertown, Massachusetts is "consistent" with the description of one of
the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing."What we're looking for right now is a suspect consistent with the
description of suspect number two, the white capped individual who was
involved in Monday's bombing of the Boston Marathon," said Colonel
Timothy Alben of the Massachusetts State Police in a brief press
conference, referencing photos of the bombing suspects released by the
FBI Thursday. "You've seen the picture, you all have it. That's the
individual that we're looking for at this moment." A statement from the Middlesex County District Attorney's office said
the situation began with a report of shots fired at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Cambridge around 10 PM. An MIT campus police
officer was subsequently found dead in his vehicle. Afterward, police
received reports two suspects carjacked a man at gunpoint and kept him
in the car for about 30 minutes before releasing him at a gas station.According to the District Attorney's statement, police searched for
the vehicle and pursued it into Watertown where they exchanged gunfire
with the suspects, who also threw "explosive devices" from the car. A
police officer with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority was
"seriously injured" during this pursuit. One of the suspects was also
injured and, according to the statement, he was taken to the hospital
and pronounced dead.Alben said the second suspect in the shootings and carjacking was the
one who matched the description of the Boston bomber and "was able to
flee from that car.""There is an active search going on at this time," Alben said.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

WASHINGTON – GOP operative Andy
Parrish, a former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, is
expected to tell an Iowa Senate ­ethics panel that her 2012 presidential
campaign made improper payments to its state chairman.Having maintained a public silence so far,
Parrish referred questions Wednesday to his attorney, John Gil­more, who
said his client will corroborate allegations from another former
Bachmann aide, Peter Waldron.

Waldron, a Florida pastor, claims that the
campaign hid payments to Iowa Sen. Kent Sorenson, in violation of Iowa
Senate ethics rules that bar members from receiving pay from
presidential campaigns.

Until now, Parrish has been identified by the committee only as “Witness A,” Gilmore said.“The time has come to confirm that ‘Witness
A’ is Andy Parrish, and he’ll be providing an affidavit with supporting
material that completely supports the representations previously made by
Peter Waldron,” Gilmore said.Sorenson has vehemently denied any
wrongdoing, calling the ethics charges “totally baseless, without
evidence, and a waste of Iowans’ time and money.” Lawyers for the
Bachmann campaign also have denied the allegations.

Waldron’s accusations are also the subject of
inquiries by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the independent
Office of Congressional Ethics. The investigations are part of a growing
web of legal problems facing Bachmann, including a lawsuit by former
staffer Barbara Heki alleging that Sorenson stole a proprietary e-mail
list of Iowa home-school families from her personal computer. Those
allegations also are the subject of an ongoing police investigation in
Urbandale, Iowa.Gilmore said Parrish can provide the ethics
panel documentary evidence that Sorenson was paid $7,500 a month to work
on Bachmann’s campaign, money that was funneled to him indirectly
through C&M Strategies, a Colorado-based company controlled by
Bachmann fundraiser Guy Short.Among the sources of the funding, Waldron
contends, was Bachmann’s independent political organization,
Michele­PAC, also headed by Short. Attorneys for Short have denied the
allegations, which also are part of the FEC inquiry.

Sorenson rocked the Bachmann campaign in the
waning days of the Iowa caucuses when he left to join the campaign of
rival Ron Paul. At the time, Bachmann suggested that Sorenson’s
defection was prompted by money.

Parrish’s willingness to go public against
his former employer and political mentor is likely to send shock waves
through Minnesota GOP circles, where both he and his attorney are
well-known figures.Parrish served as deputy campaign manager of
last year’s unsuccessful effort to pass a constitutional amendment
prohibiting same-sex marriage. Gilmore is a well-known conservative
blogger.“Andy is taking a bit of a risk,” Gilmore
said. “But at the same time, he feels loyal to Peter Waldron. Peter’s
been out there doing the best he can.”Waldron, for his part, said Parrish’s
willingness to come forward “reflects impeccable character and a sense
of civic duty that is extraordinary.”

Parrish’s decision to go public came hours
after the Iowa Senate ethics panel set a 10-day deadline for “Witness A”
to step forward publicly with information.The six-member panel — made up of three
Republicans and three Democrats — also directed the Secretary of the
Iowa Senate, Michael Marshall, to get an update on the status of the
police investigation in the Heki case.

Iowa Sen. Wally Horn, a Democrat who chairs
the ethics committee, said the panel felt it needs to move forward to
resolve the allegations or dismiss them. Waldron originally filed three
complaints against Sorenson with the ethics panel in January. One of
them, alleging improper business disclosures, has been dismissed. The
other two complaints, alleging hidden payments and misappropriation of
the e-mail list, are still pending.

Horn said he hopes to resolve the ethics
complaints before the legislature adjourns next month. Meanwhile, two
sources close to the Bachmann campaign have told the Star Tribune that
congressional ethics investigators have questioned them about
allegations that her presidential campaign played an improper role in
her 2011 book tour.

In the debate over government spending, the central data point wielded by fans of austerity
is the claim that once a country reaches a debt load over 90 percent of
its economy — a threshold the United States is approaching — economic
growth goes into a tailspin. That argument came from a 2010 study
by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. After surveying a wide number of
countries, they found that, on average, once the 90 percent mark is
crossed, economic growth slows. Though the paper always had problems
that kept many economists from embracing it, that didn’t stop it from
becoming “the most influential article cited in public and policy
debates about the importance of debt stabilization” as Slate’s Matt
Yglesias put it.There were already problems
with the Reinhart-Rogoff study, but up until now, other researchers
haven’t been able to replicate or pick through its numbers. A new paper finally has, and as Mike Konczal over at Next New Deal reports, it dug up some truly mortal flaws. First, Reinhart and Rogoff excluded the post-war years for certain
countries that enjoyed robust economic growth despite debt levels well
over 90 percent. They also chose a skewed method of weighting the data:
for example, New Zealand’s single year of terrible growth while over the
90 percent threshold wound up counting just as much as Britain’s 19
years of healthy growth. And they even incorrectly input at least one Excel spreadsheet formula, wrongly excluding several countries form their calculations.In short, the central argument in support of austerity — cited by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, the New York Times’ David Brooks, and multipletimes
by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — is now
defunct. No one disputes that a country should avoid a big build-up in
debt over the long-term. But every concrete signal
we’re getting from the American economy — our high unemployment, our
low inflation, our extraordinarily low interest rates, and our negative
real interest rates — are a signal that more debt spending in the short
term to fight the depression is perfectly appropriate. Thanks to the
austerity drive that was heavily influenced by Reinhart and Rogoff’s
study, American lawmakers ignored those signals (and plenty of others) and cut spending, delivering the most destructive fiscal policy we’ve had in any recession since at least 1980...............

Georgia state House Rep. Chuck Sims (R-Amrbose) was arrested last
week and charged with Driving Under the Influence, his second such
arrest in the last three years. The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported Monday that Sims was arrested and taken into custody shortly before midnight on April 2. An officer in Coffee County reportedly observed a motorist driving
erratically who then accelerated, plowing their vehicle into into the
highway shoulder. Sims was arrested and booked into the Coffee County
Jail in Douglas, Georgia, then released on $1,487 bond.

In a statement, Sims said, “Just as I do not intend to seek any
special treatment, I hope that I am not unfairly pre-judged based on
rumor and speculation. I am confident that as facts of this situation
are revealed, the interests of justice will be served.”Sims was arrested for DUI in 2010 by Atlanta police. He is among the state lawmakers who voted in favor of House Bill 861, which mandated drug testing for all Georgians seeking public assistance funding.

Friday, April 05, 2013

As lawmakers prepare to release legislative language for proposals
that would allow an estimated 11.2 million undocumented immigrants to
earn a path to citizenship, a small bipartisan group of senators is
struggling to reach a deal for how to create a steady supply of labor
for farmers and growers, threatening to undermine the newfound momentum
for comprehensive reform.

Lawmakers agree that the roughly 1 million individuals currently
working without legal status in the agricultural industry are essential
to maintaining America’s food supply and should be able to achieve legal
status through an expedited legalization process. But the parties
remain deeply divided over how to treat future flows of farm workers.
Four senators — Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Marco Rubio
(R-FL), and Michael Bennet (D-CO) — are currently involved in tense
negotiations between growers and advocates for farm workers, represented
by United Farm Workers of America. The talks, which hinge on the wages
workers should earn and the number of new visas that should be issued,
are close to a standstill, sources involved in the negotiations tell
ThinkProgress, as the growers refuse to make concessions and are
insisting on paying future farm workers less than they are earning now.

Under current law, growers can legally bring foreign agricultural
workers into the United States under the H-2A visa program after making
an active effort to recruit U.S. workers in areas of expected labor
supply. Employers must pay the higher of the state or federal minimum
wage, a local prevailing wage rate or the adverse effect wage rate
(AEWR), a Reagan era formula based on the USDA Farm Labor Survey of the
average wages of nonsupervisory field and livestock workers. Growers who
import labor are prohibited from paying their agricultural workers less
than the average of the wages in their region and are exempt from
paying Social Security and Medicare taxes on H-2A compensation. As a
result, foreign workers cost growers an average of 11 percent less than
American workers. Lax enforcement of H-2A standards, however, has allowed growers to
routinely circumvent protections, including advertising requirements and
the hiring of illegal international recruiters to import even cheaper
labor from Mexico. Workers on H-2A visas, advocates say, are abused by
employers, cheated out of pay, and lack basic labor protections like
occupational safety standards. Farm workers are paid some of the lowest
wages in the country and are more likely to live in poverty and lack
basic access to health care than salary employees.

Groups representing farm workers argue that the H-2A system is rifle
with abuse, while growers complain that red tape, mass delays, and
overregulation serve as barriers to importing needed labor. Both sides
have now agreed to establish a new visa program outside of the H-2A
structure that would be included in a broader immigration reform deal —
but are very far apart in the details of that plan. Individuals involved in the negotiations say that growers are
demanding wage standards that would amount to a significant reduction
from the current AEWR formula, allowing employers to import cheap
foreign labor while significantly undercutting American workers and
lowering the earning potential of future streams of workers. Growers,
whose opening offer would have paid workers just 10 percent above the
federal minimum wage, have proposed numerous pay formulas, one person
directly involved in the negotiations told ThinkProgress, but appear
uninterested in compromising with labor groups. Kristi Boswell, Director
of Congressional Relations at the American Farm Bureau — the
organization representing growers — pushed back against that
formulation, saying that while the discussions are “ongoing,” the
growers’ proposals would “increase wages” for farmers and would better
represent market conditions. The current AEWR average is $10.80, while grower proposals would pay workers less than $8.
“It must take incredible willpower for growers to utter the words
‘farmworkers are overpaid’ with a straight face,” Marshall Fitz,
Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress,
said. Farm workers “are the most difficult and physically demanding jobs
in America and are performed by workers making barely above the minimum
wage.” A policy analyst close to the negotiations told ThinkProgress that
growers may be refusing to give ground during Senate negotiations in
hopes of securing a more favorable agreement in Republican-controlled
House. But GOP senators taking part in the talks are growing frustrated,
and immigration reform advocates fear that without a clear deal
governing future flows of immigrants, comprehensive reform may be in
trouble.

“Agribusiness lobby power has kept farm workers excluded from every
major labor law for decades,” said Maria Machuca, spokeswoman for the
Keene, California-based UFW, in an e-mail. “It would be a grievous
mistake to allow agribusiness to use the debate over immigration reform
to further reduce wages of the poorest workers in the country.”

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Bryan Fischer, the director of issues analysis of the fundamentalist
American Family Association (AFA), on Wednesday blasted Fox News host
Bill O’Reilly for accusing conservative Christians of not being able to
do anything but “thump the Bible” during arguments against same sex
marriage. Last week, O’Reilly had angered many social conservatives when he announced that “the compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals.”

“That is where the compelling argument is. We’re Americans, we just
want to be treated like everybody else,” the Fox News host explained.
“And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the
Bible.”On
his Wednesday radio show, Fischer called O’Reilly “blindly ignorant of
all of the arguments that we have made that go beyond the scripture,
that confirm the scripture, that are in alignment with the scripture to
support our contention that God has defined marriage as a one man, one
woman institution — and it should not ever under any circumstances be
redifined.”

“Now, have we thumped our Bibles? Absolutely!” he admitted. “Because
we believe it is the revealed word of God, that’s where we take out
stand, that’s where plant our feet.”Fischer added that O’Reilly was a “pompous, arrogant windbag” and was
“completely oblivious” to the fact that he had insulted the “Bible
thumpers.”“The implication is we’re a bunch of Neanderthal, redneck, hillbilly
Bible bangers. That’s essentially what he’s saying we are… He’s
insulting us to our face!”

In 1960, when vastly more Americans were involved in physical labor of
some kind, 0.65% of workforce participants between the ages of 18 and 64
were receiving Social Security disability insurance payments. Fifty
years later, in a much healthier America that number has grown to 5.6%.

[E]very guy who signs his “disability” application with an “x” is yet
another cross the productive people have to bear. It’s one more
headache. It’s one more straw on the back of the camel. It gets easier
every morning to cross over. I could take the blue pill and fill out the
paperwork.

I could sign it with an “x” and tell Doctor Feelgood that “Muh teacher
didn’t larn me no goode.” The pencil would whip. My legs would go up on
the couch, the check would roll in. You could carry me. It would be just
that easy. Until nobody bothers at all…

The author of that piece, Repair_Man_Jack, links to data from the Social Security Administration that includes this graph.
"Jack" got that from this blog, which says of the data: "I'm surprised that the government posted these on their .gov site."
After all, look at that spike in applications! Why so many disability applications?
Before we answer that question, let's look a little closer at the data.
What's economically important, for those who worry unduly about such
things, is how many disability claims Social Security is awarding. That
graph is the bottom line above, but we've broken it out below.

Still an increase over time, but consistently. But notice that the
government is actually awarding far fewer applicants. Applications are
way up, awards are consistent. Here's the percentage of applications
that resulted in awards over time.

Leading to this chart from the Social Security Administration, showing
the number of people receiving payment at the end of each month. Over
the past thirty years, those receiving benefits have increased — very,
very consistently.

So let's get back to the question of those applications. Why so many more?
Go back to that first graph. Notice when the big application spike
happened — 2009 or 2010. Now, subtract 65 from that number. 2010 minus
65 years equals 1945. The year the Second World War ended. And the year
that the baby boom began in earnest.
America's population has gotten steadily older. Here's the population
distribution from the censuses of 1990, 2000, and 2010. That bump that's
moving slowly to the right is the baby boom. (It's getting smaller as
more Boomers die off.)

Population distribution by age2010200019900-410-1420-2430-3440-4450-5460-6470-7480-840.010.030.050.070.09percent

Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute and the Harvard
School of Public Health notes in his recent book "A Nation of Takers:
America's Entitlement Epidemic" that 29% of the 8.6 million Americans
who received Social Security disability benefits at the end of 2011
cited injuries involving the "musculoskeletal system and the connective
tissue."

That's called arthritis.
The greatest irony here is that those older arthritics fall into
another group besides "most likely to file for disability". That group
is "the Republican party". Here's how people in different age groups
voted in 2012.

Nov 2012 Exit PollsObamaRomney18-2930-4445-6465+3040506070

Using data from Pew Research's historical voter registration polling,
we put together this rough estimate of the age composition of the
Republican Party. It is quite literally not getting any younger.

Age distribution in Republican party18-2930-4950-6465+1996200420126%17%28%39%50%

In fact, this is the party's main challenge right now: It's weighted
heavily toward older, whiter voters. And while those older voters may
enjoy taking umbrage with the freeloaders exploiting the "productive"
people, the critique hits much closer to home than they seem to realize.
Lots of stones being thrown in increasingly creaky glass houses.